Episode #100 ... Heidegger pt. 1 - Phenomenology and Dasein

Episode Overview

• The episode begins with the famous philosophical anecdote of Plato defining a human as a "featherless biped" and Diogenes refuting it with a plucked chicken, introducing the challenge of defining fundamental concepts.
• It introduces ontology as the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being and existence, asking questions like "What does it mean to be?"
• The episode sets the stage for a series on Martin Heidegger, positioning him as a thinker who believed the question of Being is the most important and neglected in all of philosophy.
• It provides a necessary background on Heidegger's teacher, Edmund Husserl, and his revolutionary philosophical method, phenomenology.

Key Concepts

• Ontology: The philosophical study of being. It asks fundamental questions like "What is existence?", "What does it mean to be a thing at all?", and "What does it mean to be a human being?".
• Plato's Featherless Biped: A historical anecdote used to illustrate the difficulty of defining concepts. Plato defines a human as a "featherless biped," which Diogenes the Cynic immediately refutes by presenting a plucked chicken and declaring, "Behold, Plato's man!"
• Phenomenology: The philosophical method developed by Edmund Husserl. It is an introspective approach designed to study the structure of subjective human consciousness and experience, separate from assumptions about an external, objective world.
• The Natural Attitude: Husserl's term for our default, everyday way of experiencing the world. It is the ingrained assumption that we are subjects perceiving an external, objective world of objects that exists independently of our consciousness.
• Dasein (Being-in-the-world): Heidegger's central concept for human existence, literally translating to "being-there." This idea reframes human existence not as a subject observing a separate world, but as an entity that is fundamentally and inseparably engaged with and part of the world.

Quotes

• At 01:35 - "A human being is a bipedal animal that doesn't have feathers." - Recounting Plato's flawed definition of a human being, which Diogenes famously disproved, highlighting the difficulty in defining even the most basic concepts.
• At 02:28 - "Ontology is the branch of philosophy that would ask the kind of question, what does it mean to be a human being?" - The speaker provides a clear definition of ontology, the central theme of the episode and the work of Martin Heidegger.
• At 05:32 - "The guy we're going to be talking about today thought that these ontological questions are not only important, they are the most important and simultaneously the most neglected questions in the history of philosophy." - Introducing Martin Heidegger and his belief that Western philosophy has largely forgotten to question the nature of Being itself.
• At 21:23 - "This whole approach...is what Husserl refers to as the natural attitude. This is where most people spend their entire lives." - Explaining the common but unexamined assumption that we are subjects perceiving an external world of objects, which phenomenology aims to suspend.
• At 25:54 - "What if being and the world are a united thing? That being can't exist without the world and the world can't exist without being." - Introducing Heidegger's foundational concept of "being-in-the-world," which collapses the traditional separation between a conscious subject and an external world.

Takeaways

• Challenge your foundational assumptions. The story of Diogenes and the plucked chicken serves as a powerful reminder to question the basic definitions and beliefs that we often take for granted without critical examination.
• Recognize that your perception is not a direct window to reality. Husserl's concept of the "natural attitude" teaches us that our everyday experience is filtered through a subjective lens. To think more clearly, we must first become aware of this lens and its inherent biases.
• Reframe your relationship with the world from observer to participant. Instead of viewing yourself as a separate mind observing an external world (the subject-object dichotomy), consider Heidegger's concept of "being-in-the-world" and see your existence as fundamentally intertwined with your environment.